To Live A Little4 - Thorns and Roses
by Aconitum-Napellus
Summary: Illya has enjoyed good sight for the past few years after his corneal transplants, but a Thrush attack changes everything. (Slash.)


[A.N. This really is a little place-filler and info-dump. I suppose this has become an AU now. I never really wanted to make it that the only way Illya could go on and be happy was to recover his sight. I don't want the suggestion to be that you can't be happy and blind. I want to move Illya on to a future where he is both blind and happy, and very capable. This is a little interlude that explains how it happens so that the next installment (slowly being formed) can take place without angst and info-dumping, with Illya just as a normal person who happens to be blind.]

Illya slurred into consciousness, and a world of pain. The scent of antiseptic, and distant sounds of voices, hard floors, doors banging open and closed. He remembered seeing their pursuers in the rear view mirror. He remembered taking a hand off the wheel to reach for his gun. And then – What? Nothing? He didn't know. He asked without thought, 'Napoleon? Where's – '

A hand pressed over his and Waverly said briskly, 'Yes, calm down, Mr Kuryakin. Calm down. No, we don't know exactly where Mr Solo is at the moment. I was rather hoping that you'd be able to tell me.'

It was a moment before he realised that he couldn't see. It was a weird, numb realisation, a realisation that made the bottom drop out of his stomach and a sense of inevitability fill the gap. He had benefited from reasonable sight for two years since the second corneal transplant, but for some reason now everything was dark. It was too much like five years ago, too much like lying in hospital in Stockholm with bandages wrapped around his head. He couldn't be there all over again, could he?

But – Napoleon. Where was Napoleon? Why was Waverly at his side?

'I – I don't know what they did with Napoleon,' he said, and he tried to raise a hand to his face, because his nose felt twice its normal size and his cheekbones ached and there was throbbing pain around his eyes. His right arm seemed to be strapped across his chest, and his shoulder was pierced with pain that reached through what he though must be very strong painkillers.

'What happened, Mr Kuryakin?' Waverly asked him.

He started to frown but too many parts of his head hurt, and he stopped. Memories slowly leached back into his mind. Their car being rammed sideways off the road. Being dragged out with the menacing barrels of Thrush rifles pointed at them. There had been a crimson stream of blood down Napoleon's face. When Illya had made a move he had been slammed to the ground, and they had lain into him. Boots slamming into his side, and then his head. Napoleon shouting, fighting, and then crying out in pain. And – everything was a void.

'We were run off the road,' he said. 'Thrush. They gave me quite a beating. I – don't know what happened to Napoleon. They must have just been after him. He's the active agent.'

Illya wasn't an active agent any more; couldn't be an active agent with the corneal transplants that weakened his eyes. He almost laughed at the irony of that fact right now. The risk from blows to the eyes was too great for him to expose himself to peril. He had been exposed to more danger in the months before the first transplant than in the coddled, desk bound years since.

'All right,' Waverly said, remarkably gently, Illya thought. A chair scraped and he sat down by the bed and said, 'Well, I suppose it's up to me to speak to you, then. Mr Kuryakin, I expect you'd rather I were frank.'

'Yes,' Illya said, because he thought he knew what was coming. A ball of dread seemed to be inflating somewhere in his chest.

'Well, then. A fractured collarbone and right ulna. You have a broken nose and cheekbone and a shattered left orbital. The transplants ruptured, son,' he said quietly. 'It was – rather bad, I'm afraid. You've lost the left eye. We'll have to see how the right does. They've done their best, of course, but you know that – '

'Yes, of course,' Illya said, cutting him off.

He had known that the eyes were vulnerable to blows since the corneal transplants. He had done so well at avoiding any kind of trauma. He had worn protective glasses a lot of the time, worn goggles in the lab whatever he was doing, avoided contact sports and worn glasses whenever he had done anything that involved catching a ball or anything else likely to catch him in the eye. But there was only so much avoiding one could do with Thrush on the scene, when one's partner was still an active agent.

 _You've lost the left eye._ Waverly's words echoed in his mind. Lost. There was no hope for that one, then. He didn't know how to feel. It was like a little death.

'And Napoleon is – ' he asked, because Napoleon was the most important thing in his life, and it was a kind of grim diversion to think of him rather than of his eyes.

'We have men searching for him. He's a good agent, Mr Kuryakin. He'll be all right.'

Illya rested back down into the bed, breathing out slowly, containing his feelings about that. Waverly was right. Napoleon was a good agent. He had got out of a lot of difficult situations in the past. He would get out of this one.

'I'm in hospital, aren't I?' he asked. He hated being in hospital, and he suspected this was a public hospital rather than the U.N.C.L.E. Infirmary. The doctors at U.N.C.L.E. just wouldn't have the specialist skill for what he had suffered. 'Must I stay in?'

'Overnight, at least,' Waverly confirmed. 'Your pain must be managed and your eyes need to be monitored.'

'You mean my eye,' Illya said with a strange little twist of humour. He resisted lifting a hand to the empty eye socket. He wanted to feel, but he didn't want to feel.

'There are marvels in prosthetics nowadays,' Waverly mentioned.

'Yes,' Illya said.

It felt so hard. It felt so hard to lose it all, all over again. It felt so hard to be thrust back into a world he thought – he had hoped – he had left behind. But there had always been a part of him waiting for a moment like this. He hadn't taken his sight for granted from the moment the first transplant had been performed.

'In my apartment,' he said clearly, 'there is a closet to the right of the front door. In it are my canes. Somehow I never got around to getting rid of them. If someone could get it for me – the long cane with the green handle – I would be very grateful.'

'I'm sure that can be arranged,' Waverly said, pressing a hand on his arm. 'I'll get Mr Slate to go in for you.'

'Thank you,' Illya said.

He felt so heavy. There was a lot of pain, but it felt softened and dulled behind the weight that was pressing on his chest. He had enjoyed such freedom in the last couple of years. He had valued it all the more because of what had gone before.

'Could I – I'd like to be left alone for a while,' he said carefully.

Waverly's hand pressed on his arm again, and he could feel the awkwardness in the air. Then he said, 'I'll go and speak to Mr Slate. You're in a public hospital, Mr Kuryakin. There's an U.N.C.L.E. man outside your room. Your communicator is on the cabinet at the head of the bed, on your left. You will know as soon as Mr Solo makes a return.'

'Thank you,' Illya said.

Then he was left alone. The pain throbbed dully through his arm, through his chest, through his face. He raised his hand finally and touched it to bandages over his eyes. It all felt so ridiculously familiar, but there was an oddness of sensation where his left eye should be. He thought he could feel a shield under the bandages, but they must have had him on a lot of painkillers, because he felt very little else. It was impossible to feel that beneath that lot his eye was gone.

Everything crushed over him like an inevitable weight, and he cried quietly and privately.

((O))

Napoleon appeared the next night. It was long after visiting hours had ended, but Illya was sitting up in his bed in his private room, talking to the U.N.C.L.E. guard who was currently on duty. His broken bones were aching and throbbing, his head was aching and throbbing, but it was better talking to someone than sitting alone. But he was galvanised when he heard Napoleon's voice outside. He couldn't hear the words, but he could hear that tone, a mixture of smooth talking and firmness. He didn't even move in the bed because he had no doubt that Napoleon would be coming through the door in just a moment.

'I think that's Mr Solo outside,' the U.N.C.L.E. man said as Illya paused in their quiet conversation, and Illya smiled.

'I think you're right,' he said. His stomach seemed to be turning over with unaccountable nerves, but he tried not to show any of that. 'Why don't you go on out, Harvey? I'm sure he'll be in in a moment.'

'All right, Mr K,' the man said. 'I'll be off shift soon so there'll be someone else here when you wake up.'

'All right,' Illya nodded, but he felt too distracted now to pay attention to social niceties. He listened as Harvey left the room, and then looked towards the door again as he heard it open. It took Napoleon seconds to cross the room and sit by the bed and close both hands around Illya's.

'Oh, Illya. I am so sorry,' he said, his voice rich with grief.

Illya's smile was small and wan.

'I suppose it was only ever a reprieve,' he said. 'I've been here before, Napoleon. I'll survive.'

'You lost your eye,' Napoleon said. He sounded consumed with sorrow and regret. His hands were closed so tightly around Illya's, and it was so good to have him there at last.

'Yes,' Illya replied. He swallowed and said, 'Yes. They – They'll wait for it to settle down and then they'll be able to fit a prosthetic. They've already fitted the ball.'

'The ball?'

He would have shrugged, but his collarbone was so sore. He felt as if he had become far too much of an authority on prosthetic eyes in the last day; something he had never foreseen as a topic of interest in his life. He had spent a long time talking to the doctor, asking him in detail about what had happened to his eyes and what would happen next.

'They insert something like a ping pong ball into the eye socket and fix the muscles around it. They did that at the same time that they removed the eye.'

'A – er – a ping pong ball?' Napoleon echoed.

Illya smiled. 'Something like a ping pong ball. The doctor brought some samples so I could see what they were like. The prosthetic itself is more like a curve of plastic than a ball. It sits over the top. That – Apparently that allows some movement, makes it look a bit more natural. They fit the eye, mould it with wax to get it right, and finish it off. After about six months they adjust it because there are usually muscular changes. There's a kind of – a kind of stand in eye in there at the moment.' He laughed. 'It probably looks like a scene from a horror movie.'

' _Illya,_ ' Napoleon said softly.

It was obvious that Napoleon was feeling a great deal more unease over this right now than Illya. When they had started telling him about the prosthetic and how the situation would progress he had felt something approaching panic and revulsion over the whole thing, but he had had more than a day to start to come to terms with what had happened. It wasn't enough time for a real adjustment but enough time to calm the surface. One of his methods of coming to terms with something was to research everything he could about the scenario so that he felt that he was in control. He kept having terrible, swooping moments of paralysing horror over the situation, but he clung to _knowing_ everything about it, and to the black humour he could apply to it.

'Well, I won't be startled by it when looking in the mirror, anyway,' he said. 'And you won't for now, Napoleon. I don't think they'll take the bandages off for a few days. They'll fit the new eye when I've healed enough, in a few weeks. They have very skilled artists working on these things. Maybe you can look out a photo so they know what it should look like.' He gave a huffing laugh. 'It'll look more normal than my eyes have for years.'

'And the other eye?' Napoleon asked, a flicker of hope in his voice.

Illya sighed. He had been focussing so much on the eye that was beyond hope, and he knew that was probably because he didn't want to face the prognosis for the other eye. Yes, he was familiar with blindness, yes, he had learnt to adapt in the past. But he didn't want to do it all again.

'I can't see anything through it right now,' he said carefully. 'The retina detached and there was internal haemorrhage, and – well, a lot of damage. They tried to re-attach the retina but they had a lot of trouble. I can't see anything. They think there might be some improvement in time, but not much.'

'You're in the dark,' Napoleon said.

'Yes,' Illya replied with an odd kind of sobbing laugh. 'Yes, I'm in the dark. Totally, on the left. It's not even dark, I suppose. It's nothing. I'm getting funny little flashes sometimes, like fireworks and blotches of light. Maybe it's the nerve trying to make sense of it. And on the right – just dark. You won't be able to get out the Christmas lights for me this year.'

'Oh, Illya,' Napoleon said, his hands soft and strong over his partner's hand. It was so good to feel the warmth and security of Napoleon's hands.

'Well, I know how to cope with it, at least,' Illya said. 'It's like going back to a familiar place. Not a place I ever wanted to be, but I know how they do things there. I know the customs a little too well.'

'I'm sorry,' Napoleon said suddenly. 'I'm so sorry, Illya. I tried to get to you. I tried to stop them attacking you. One of them slammed me round the back of the skull with a gun when I made a move. If I could have – '

'Napoleon,' Illya said quietly, turning his hand over so he was holding Napoleon's. 'You couldn't do anything. No guilt, please. There's no need for that.'

Napoleon lifted his hand and pressed his lips against it.

'All right,' he said eventually. 'All right. No guilt.'

'How did you get away?' Illya asked, and Napoleon laughed softly.

'They were careless,' he said. 'I don't know exactly how long I was out for, but it was a while – '

'Have you seen a doctor?' Illya interrupted, and Napoleon squeezed his hand.

'Yes, dear, I have seen a doctor. I checked in with Waverly and saw a doctor before I came here. I have to watch out for all the usual signs of concussion, but I'm okay. So – where was I? I woke up in one of their cells, alone. They'd taken my gun but left me with everything else.'

'Careless,' Illya murmured.

'You almost sound disapproving. I was glad of their carelessness. I melted the lock and slipped out, knocked a guard out before he knew I was there, took his weapon, established you weren't there too, and made my way home.'

'You make it sound so simple,' Illya mused.

'It was very simple. Almost embarrassingly so. I don't mind. There are times when a man wants a challenge, Illya, but this wasn't one of them. Once I was fairly sure they didn't have you I needed to find out if you were all right. I didn't know if they'd killed you. They could have killed you, you know.'

'I know,' Illya said. He did know that. It was a blessing that he had been allowed to keep his life.

'So as it turns out, they just left you lying by the car when they took me. Those goons knew I was the active agent. I think you've fallen a little off their radar in recent years. The people who found you thought at first you'd been hurt in the car wreck, I think, but pretty soon they realised you'd been beaten. They got you an ambulance, got you to hospital.'

'I know,' Illya said, because all of this had been relayed to him.

He had tried not to think of how he must have looked when he had been found by the car, with his eyes ruined like that. He tried not to think about that transition between the blessed two years of sight that had been gifted to him, and his return to a blindness that was more complete than it had been before.

'Well, the good news is that now I'm back the doctors will consider letting you home,' Napoleon told him.

'They think I can't look after myself,' Illya murmured, because he had gained that feeling every time he had asked the doctors when he would be allowed out. He had been up and down to the toilet, using his cane, and explored to the end of the corridor before being caught and herded back to bed. No matter how many times he told them he knew how to be blind, they didn't seem to believe him.

'No, my dear,' Napoleon assured him. 'But you have broken bones, your arm is in a sling, and you've suffered severe head injuries. With the best will in the world they're not going to let you go home to an empty apartment, blind or not.'

'Of course,' Illya said. He had been let home with worse injuries before, but there was no point in arguing. He was just glad that it was going to happen now. He sighed, and moved his mind away from dwelling on all that had changed, and said, 'I suppose I'll have to go shopping again. I wonder if the Lighthouse is still in the same location…'

'Illya,' Napoleon said softly, a hand on his arm.

'It's all right, Napoleon,' he promised. 'I'll be all right. It's just a shock. I'll get over these breaks and I'll get back into the flow, and things will just be normal again. I thought five years ago that I was going to always be blind. I'm just back to the status quo. I just wish we hadn't let Sarah go...'

Napoleon lifted his hand and kissed his knuckles. 'Maybe Sarah can come back,' he said, and Illya smiled.

'I don't think so. She's out in Idaho, and the last I heard from her she was head over heels for the man she was working for, and the feeling was reciprocal. I'm sure there are other people out there qualified for the job. I don't think Marianne is exactly up to it,' he laughed, referring to his current, rather scatterbrained, secretary. 'We'll find someone. It might take a few weeks, but I'll slip back into old habits, I'm sure.'

'We both will,' Napoleon promised. 'You'll have to start being tidy again, and I'll stop forgetting to close doors.'

'I'll have to let you drive again,' Illya said rather regretfully. He loved driving so much, and it had been a joy to be able to get back behind the wheel again. He had even got back to flying, and nothing compared to that.

'It will be my pleasure to drive you anywhere,' Napoleon told him.

'Thank you, Napoleon,' Illya said rather quietly.

The reality came over him in waves, and it was hitting him strongly right now. He felt the oddness in his left eye and stared into the thick, covering darkness and inhaled the scents of Napoleon and the hospital room and felt the warmth of Napoleon's hand.

'I want to hug you,' Napoleon said, 'but I'm afraid of hurting you.'

Illya half-smiled. 'Try hugging me,' he said, sitting forward painfully from the pillows. 'I feel like I need a hug.'

'All right,' Napoleon said, and then his arms were around Illya, holding him gently, and Illya's collarbone ached and pain spiked as he leant into Napoleon's hug, but despite the pain he needed to be held in those safe, strong arms.

((O))

'All right. There you go,' Napoleon said, and the key scraped in the lock and Illya stepped in through the apartment door.

The scent hit him instantly, and he stood there, inhaling deeply, just wondering.

'Let me in so I can do the alarm,' Napoleon said, shuffling past, and Illya stepped a little to one side, leaning his cane against the sideboard that stood by the door. He reached out a hand to the sideboard and his fingers touched the cool, heavy base of a vase. He traced them upwards to touch cool, smooth leaves, little catching thorns, and then the soft cool mass of rose heads. He bent his head towards the flowers and let the softness brush on his bruised face and the scent rise around him.

'They're beautiful, Napoleon, thank you,' he said.

Napoleon came back from turning off the alarm to catch his hand and then stroke fingers down his cheek, and as Illya lifted his face Napoleon kissed him with lips as soft as the roses.

'There are more on the coffee table, and in the bedroom on your nightstand, and on the dresser in there,' Napoleon told him. 'I wanted to fill the apartment with roses but I figured they'd get in your way, and besides, I need to hold aside some of my salary for visiting the Lighthouse.'

'Don't be silly, Napoleon, I can pay for what I need from the Lighthouse,' Illya said instantly.

'I know,' Napoleon said, stroking his cheek very lightly because of the bruising. 'I was joking, anyway, dear.'

'Thank you for the roses,' Illya said again. Perhaps it was because he was tired and in pain, or perhaps it was because this was all so odd, but he felt ridiculously touched by the gesture.

'It was my complete pleasure,' Napoleon said, leaning in to kiss him lightly. 'Now, why don't you go sit down and I'll bring you tea.'

'I can make tea,' Illya said rather uncomfortably. He was so wary of falling into dependence.

'I am completely aware of that, little cactus,' Napoleon told him gently, 'but you have a broken arm and a broken collarbone, you're wearing a sling and doing everything left-handed, and I don't see why I shouldn't wait on you for a few days. Now go sit down and I will bring you tea.'

Illya sighed and smiled and walked over to the sofa, stepping carefully. It wasn't quite like riding a bike. Perhaps it was more like driving a car again after years of not driving. He could remember what to do, and how to do it, but it would take a little time before it was all easy again. He felt so cautious of falling with his arm in the sling. His collarbone was so painful.

He sat on the sofa and rested back. The mingled aching and sharp pain of the broken bones made themselves felt as he relaxed. His face ached and the bruises were tender and there was pain about his eyes again, and he wondered where the painkillers he had brought home from hospital were. He remembered his braille label maker and thought how putting labels on things would be a priority again, because he so hated feeling over boxes and packets and having to ask someone else what it was in his hands, particularly with medications. He still had his tactile alarm clock and watch, at least, because they were good timepieces and just as useful with sight as without; besides, it was useful being able to tell the time without turning a light on, or discreetly without looking at his watch when he was in meetings.

He thought of his old brailler and how he had donated it with a bunch of other things when his sight had become good enough that he didn't need it any more. He would have to refresh his memory of all of that. Maybe he could take a couple of refresher classes just to bring it all back. Then he remembered how he had always wanted to learn musical braille and had never got round to it. He smiled wryly. That would be a project he could set himself, at any rate. He had been enjoying exploring Vaughan Williams recently with his oboe. If he wanted to continue learning pieces he would have to learn that complex form of braille. Maybe he could use his time recuperating from these injuries to start that learning process.

'Here's your tea, honey,' Napoleon said, and Illya reached out his left hand and took the warm mug and sipped at the drink as Napoleon sat down beside him. 'I'll get your painkillers too,' Napoleon said.

Illya smiled at how attentive Napoleon was, but he put the mug down on the coffee table and shuffled a little closer to his partner and said, 'In a minute. In a minute, yes? Just be with me for a moment.'

'I am always with you,' Napoleon promised, putting an arm gently around his back, not squeezing because of the collarbone, but just holding him. 'I will always be with you.'

'I know,' Illya said, and he leant against that warm body next to him and dropped his head onto Napoleon's shoulder, and just felt his presence. It was going to be odd for a while, he knew. It was going to be hard. Everything would have to change again. His right eye wasn't going to heal enough for useful sight and his left eye was gone. Work would have to change again, he would have to find a good assistant again, he would have to rearrange his life again to suit not having sight. That all felt like an enormous mountain and he felt heavy with the thought of having to climb to the top.

It hit him suddenly, in a way it hadn't yet. It was like a sledgehammer coming down on him. He had lost his eye. The bandages had come off before he had been discharged that afternoon. Now he lifted a hand and touched his fingernail tentatively to the smooth, hard piece of plastic that was there where his eye should be. He suddenly felt sick, a strange kind of dizziness creeping over him.

'Illya?' Napoleon asked. 'Illya, are you all right?'

He gave a strange little laugh. 'I've lost my eye,' he said. 'Isn't that funny? I don't even know what they did with it. I suppose it went into the incinerator with all the other medical waste. But – '

He didn't know what to say, and abruptly his throat was thick with sobs, and he leant himself against Napoleon and gave in to the need to weep. It felt so ridiculously unfair. It felt so ridiculously strange to have lost such an integral part of himself, and to have been plunged back into a blindness that was darker than it had ever been before.

Napoleon held him and stroked his back, and whispered words to him, and after a while he felt as if he had choked out all of that sudden shock and grief. He wiped his fingers delicately over his bruised eyes and sat up straighter and said, 'I'm sorry. I'm better now. It's just – '

'No,' Napoleon assured him. 'You needed that. You need to be able to grieve.'

'Yes,' Illya said. 'Yes, I know.'

He reached out to find his cup of tea, and found it was almost cold, but he drank some anyway.

'All right,' he said. He took in a very deep breath, and his collarbone seared, so he exhaled again slowly. 'All right,' he said again. 'I'm going to stop being ridiculous now. I don't want to spend the next six months sobbing. Give me my painkillers, please, and make me another cup of tea, and then I will go through what I need from the Lighthouse, and you can make a list. Tomorrow we'll go down there and pick out what I need. I'll get Human Resources on to finding me a new assistant. And when these bones heal I will be back to work.'

Napoleon lifted his hand and kissed it. 'I'll get your painkillers and another cup of tea, and a pencil and paper,' he said. 'And if you're up to it tomorrow I'll take you to the store – but only if you're up to it.'

'Thank you, Napoleon,' Illya said, reaching out to catch his hand.

He inhaled, drawing in the scent of the roses that filled the room. There were some on the coffee table, he remembered Napoleon saying. That was why the scent was so strong. Everywhere he went in the apartment the place would smell of roses, and he would be reminded of Napoleon's love. He would heal, and he would rebuild his life again, and Napoleon would be there beside him.


End file.
